There are a lot of issues that people have with various flavors of linux. Most of them can only be properly addressed by people who are using that same version of linux. I'd like to see a new forum where linux-specific issues can be addressed.

I don't think anyone was arguing for or against the use of Linux in any of it's flavors. There are a lot of posts, though, that say I'm using Redhat or OpenSuse or Ubuntu or some other version of Linux, and I'm having this, that, or the other problem.

The problems are not with the Arduino, but with the setup of the IDE, or the installation of libraries, or some other issue that only someone who is running that same version of Linux (or something very similar) would know how to deal with.

I don't read the foreign language forums, because I don't speak any of the languages that are supported. If there was a Linux forum, I would skip that too, because, although I have used Linux, and I like it, I'm not comfortable offering advice on how to solve Linux specific problems. Heck, I don't even understand most of the issues or the solutions.

Problems that aren't Linux-specific would go in the regular forums, but the Linux-specific (or Mac or Windows) could go in the OS specific forum.

Hi,I think there are maybe 2-3 questions a week that can be said to be truly linux-specific. The rest is : "I'm on <insert OS-flavour here> and the Hardware doesn't work / IDE doesn't work."Nothing is gained if those people simply post any question into a forum because it deals witrh their OS. The only change I would really appreciate is a sticky topic that says :"Please tell us what operation system are you on, when posting a question."Because that is very often the first reply to a new topic.

Often the "Please tell us what OS" question needs to be asked because that problem is not occurring on other platforms. If there were platform specific areas, perhaps newbies would understand that the operating system they are using IS an important part of understanding a problem.

The main issue with Linux, beyond which specific flavor people run, is which version of GCC. As you know in Linux, Arduino is not coming with a bundled set of libraries, but it works with the ones coming from repositories depending on each distro.

In this way it happens that Arduino 0013 (to mention one randomly) is the same for Win/Mac but not for Linux. I run the latest Ubuntu -yes I am one of those that updates the day the thing comes out and spends one week without wireless until someone figures out the fix- and I could run Arduino 0013 IDE with Arduino 0018 tools ... sounds funky, but it is how it works in Linux.

This, that gets very handy sometimes ... becomes hard to understand for newbies ... and they are not the ones to blame.

I agree that there are linux specific questions, but we have also a very good set of documentation for Linux produced by the community. This question puzzles me a little. Maybe we should vote and see what comes out.